Paint a triangle mural (quarantine wall)

This quarantine my daughter and I were inspired by some TikTok videos to create some murals in our house. We created one in my office for a video backdrop and another in her bedroom. This is a simple (but time consuming) mural that was a great project to take on with my 11 year old daughter. I pieced together the steps by seeing what others were doing in videos so this may not be the BEST way, but it’s my way :)

What you’ll need:

• 4 paint colours

• A large paint roller

• Painting tape

• Paint brushes

• Drop cloth

• Step stool

Step 1:

Pick 4 paint colours - 3 for the triangles and one base colour for the strips between the triangles. If you like the current colour of your wall you can have that be your fourth colour and skip steps 2 and 4 but will have to be more careful when you get to step 6. My daughter and I both chose to paint our walls white and then picked three other colours for the pops of triangle we wanted. I picked a cream colour that ended up being VERY pale and not terribly distinguishable from the white so you may want to double check how the colours lay next to each other before committing.

Start by painting the wall your base colour - we used white

Step 2:

Lay out your drop cloth (this was my kid’s first wall painting efforts and I’ve never seen as much paint land on the drop cloth so cover carefully) and tape the side walls, ceiling and baseboards.

Paint the wall your base colour (this is the only time you’ll need a large paint roller). You don’t need to be super careful here because you’re going to be covering most of it, but you will want it to be covered evenly. We used a cheap leftover can of paint we found in the basement for my office and it took two coats of white to cover the brown that was there before.

Step 3:

Tape your triangles

Start taping your triangles. There are no rules here but only a few suggestions:

• Don’t make too many SMALL triangles, that will get fiddly (there were quite a lot of small triangles in the first room we did and less in the second - check out the images of both at the end to see which you prefer!)

• Make a few LARGE triangles for effect.

• Double check that all the taping has been done straight to avoid wobbly triangles (kids can pick the triangle shapes but adults may want to go and straighten the lines up.)

Not having a plan can stress some people out so just try to go with the flow and know that you can always un-tape and re-tape anything you don’t like later. It’s ok if some shapes aren’t perfectly triangular.

Step 4:

To avoid too many colours touching each other we pre-planed what colour would go where by writing a 1, 2, or 3 in each triangle. You may have some where the same colour touch and that’s OK too but pre-planning a bit here will give you a plan to follow. I had my husband do this part because I would have winged it - he enjoyed planning out how to have the least amount of repeating colours. This, in my opinion, is an optional step. Write the number lightly in pencil right on the wall - we put the number on the tape and we accidentally painted over some of them.

Step 5:

You can skip this step if you used the original wall colour and you can also skip this step if you’re confident you can paint carefully.

Paint the base colour of all the edges of the tape. This means that we’re creating a barrier to stop the brighter colours from leaking underneath the tape, and if anything does leak it’s the same colour as the base colour. We had very little paint seeping through so it seemed to work well for us!

Step 6:

Start painting in your triangles!

We used a foam roller on the first wall but I actually found it easier to just stick to paint brushes for this project. It may take several coats depending on how well the paint covers.

We painted all the triangle colours and then would wait for them all to dry and then do another coat again the next day. This is the longest part but it’s really fun to see all the colours come together on the wall!

My daughter wasn’t quite tall enough to do the top ceiling edges so I took care of those but she was able to do the rest!

You may end up with some drips and messes but they were all easy to cover up later and it was a great way for my daughter to practice her painting skills!

Step 7:

This is the most satisfying step! Peeling all the tape off!

And that’s the triangle wall. They’ve created some fabulously cheerful backdrops in our house and they’re fun to paint too - a fun project for a summer when we’re all spending more time at home! Check out the video below I made that went up on Tiktok to see us doing the whole process on the first wall.

Finished pink wall